Voluntary trusteeship is easy to overlook — but as Toby Watson’s tenure at Excalibur Academies Trust demonstrates, its contribution to educational outcomes is more direct and more significant than most people appreciate.
Academy trusts depend on volunteer trustees to provide the governance that allows their schools to function well. Yet, the connection between trusteeship and educational outcomes is rarely made explicit — it tends to be visible only when governance fails, not when it succeeds. Finding trustees who combine the right skills with genuine long-term commitment is harder than it sounds. Toby Watson, whose professional background made him unusually well-placed to contribute, spent nearly eight years showing what that combination looks like in practice at Excalibur Academies Trust.
Toby Watson served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Excalibur Academies Trust from February 2018 until early 2026. Before taking on that role, Toby Watson had spent nearly 17 years at Goldman Sachs, working across structured credit trading, principal funding, and global infrastructure financing. That background gave him a practical understanding of financial risk, organisational complexity, and long-term institutional management that translated directly into the governance of a large multi-academy trust. During his tenure, the Trust grew to around 20 schools serving approximately 10,000 pupils. Susan Clarke succeeded him as Chair in early 2026.
How Voluntary Trusteeship Shapes What Happens in Schools — and Why Toby Watson’s Contribution Mattered
It is tempting to think of academy trust governance as something that happens at a remove from the real work of education — in boardrooms and committee meetings rather than classrooms and staffrooms. In practice, the quality of governance shapes the conditions in which schools operate in very direct ways: through the soundness of financial decisions, the stability of leadership, and the clarity of strategic direction that a well-governed trust can provide.
The six points below draw on Toby Watson’s experience to explain the specific ways in which voluntary trusteeship supports better outcomes — not in the abstract, but in the concrete, practical terms that matter for the children and communities a trust serves.
Why does voluntary trusteeship produce better outcomes than tokenism?
The difference between genuine trusteeship and nominal board membership is significant. A trustee who prepares carefully, asks informed questions, and shows up consistently over time provides something that a disengaged board member simply cannot — a genuine check on executive decision-making, and a source of challenge and support that the executive team can actually rely on. Toby Watson’s approach, shaped by years at Goldman Sachs working in environments where rigour was expected, exemplified that kind of genuine engagement.
1. Stable Governance Enables School Improvement
Schools that operate within a well-governed trust benefit from a degree of stability that allows long-term improvement efforts to take root. Financial decisions are made on a sound basis, leadership is supported through difficulty, and strategic priorities are maintained consistently rather than shifting with every change in personnel. That stability does not come from the executive team alone — it is built and sustained, in part, by the quality of non-executive oversight that Toby Watson provided throughout his tenure.
2. Financial Oversight Protects Schools From Avoidable Problems
Many of the most damaging problems that academy trusts face have a financial dimension — not always because of deliberate mismanagement, but because budgets were approved without adequate scrutiny, or because financial risks were not identified until they became crises. Voluntary trustees with genuine financial expertise help prevent those problems from developing in the first place. The analytical rigour that Toby Watson brought to Excalibur’s board, developed over years of working with complex financial structures, provided exactly that kind of protective oversight.
The Importance of Asking the Right Questions
Financial oversight is not just about reading the numbers — it is about knowing which questions to ask and being willing to ask them even when the answers are uncomfortable. That requires both the expertise to understand financial information and the confidence to challenge it. Toby Watson’s professional background gave him both, and applying them in a governance context was a natural extension of habits built over a long career in international finance.
3. Experienced Trustees Support Leadership Development
Good trustees do more than oversee — they support the people responsible for running the organisation, particularly during periods of transition or challenge. When Nicky Edmondson stepped down as CEO of Excalibur in 2024, Toby Watson’s sustained presence as Chairman provided a form of continuity that helped ensure a smooth handover to Nick Lewis. That kind of support is one of the less visible but genuinely important ways in which long-serving trustees contribute to organisational health.
4. Strong Governance Attracts and Retains Good Leaders
School leaders and senior staff are more likely to join and remain with trusts that are well governed. An engaged, well-informed board signals that the organisation takes its responsibilities seriously — and that the people leading it will be supported rather than left to navigate difficulties alone. Over time, that reputation becomes part of what makes a trust able to attract the calibre of leadership that drives real improvement in their schools. Toby Watson’s consistent presence at board level contributed to exactly that kind of reputation at Excalibur.
5. Long Tenure Builds the Institutional Knowledge That Governance Depends On
The value of a trustee who has served for several years is difficult to replicate quickly. They understand the organisation’s history and culture, the context behind current challenges, and the personalities involved in ways that cannot be acquired from reading board papers. The benefits that accumulate over time include:
- A working relationship with the executive team built on years of interaction and mutual understanding
- The ability to provide context when new challenges arise, drawing on experience of how similar situations have been handled before
- A credibility with staff and other stakeholders that reflects demonstrated, sustained commitment
- An understanding of the trust’s values and strategic direction that is deep rather than surface-level
Toby Watson’s nearly eight years at Excalibur meant that by the time he stepped down, he had accumulated all of these — and that the trust he left behind was better placed as a result.
6. Voluntary Commitment Signals That Education Matters
There is something worth noting about the simple fact of voluntary trusteeship: that experienced professionals are willing to give significant time and expertise, without financial reward, to the governance of organisations dedicated to educating children. Toby Watson’s sustained commitment to Excalibur over nearly eight years — maintained alongside demanding professional responsibilities, including his work at Rampart Capital — is an example of that signal in its most concrete form. It reflects a genuine belief that the work matters, and that the experience Toby Watson developed across his career had something genuinely useful to contribute to it.
